- “’Ali Even Motivates the Dead’: The Pursuit of Sovereignty in Norman Mailer’s The Fight”. PMLA. 128.2 (March 2013): 322–336
- Associate Professor
- Phone: (979) 458-3368
- Email: mikec@tamu.edu
- Office: LAAH 478
- Document: CV
Research Areas
- American Literature and Culture
- African American and African Diaspora Literature
- Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (particularly economics and literature, medical humanities, and law and literature)
Research Interests
My published scholarship explores the relationship between risk, altruism, sibling rivalry and sovereignty as that relationship emerges in works by a range of writers (including Etheridge Knight, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Jacques Derrida, and Dante) and in institutions such as the Group of 77 developing nations. I am currently working on several scholarly and creative projects that extend my exploration of the nexus between risk, altruism, sibling rivalry and sovereignty.
Research Areas
- American Literature and Culture
- African American and African Diaspora Literature
- Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (particularly economics and literature, medical humanities, and law and literature)
Educational Background
- Ph.D., Columbia University, 1999
- M., Columbia University, 1993
- M.A., University of Chicago
- B.A., Wesleyan University
Awards & Honors
- Poems in The Best American Poetry 2003 and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry
Selected Publications
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Collins, Michael S. Understanding Etheridge Knight. University of South Carolina Press, 2013
Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major—but understudied—American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931–1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose. 
Collins, Michael. The Traveling Queen. 2013
“Michael Collins’s poetry rises out of the core of being and seeing—with a touch of Revelations—always arching for the ethereal alongside the earthy low, arriving at the stillpoint of Self. It takes the reader to places of witness where meaning matters; Collins’s language of muscular grace made of experience and deep dreaming crosses landscapes to help reimagine our worlds.”
—Yusef Komunyakaa
Other Publications
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